They

So excited to learn about Merriam-Webster's word of the year — THEY as in they, them, theirs.

Only recently became aware of the adding of gender pronouns to ones email signature when our studio assistant, a savvy young college student identified as she, her, hers which led us in to a discussion about how language can confuse and be the cause of mis-gendering. Tuning-in to how language shapes our perceptions, there is a story from Argentina about gendering in the Spanish language. Listen up : here is a short podcast from the Washington Post. 

HA! HA! This year there was plenty of who-ha about Maurizio Cattelan's "Comedian" a slippery slope trope of humor — a banana duct-taped to a wall that sold for $120,000 at Art Basel Miami Beach. So we do not lose sight of that banana, here is a selection of memes.

AND!!! Greta Thunberg has just been declared TIME magazine's person of the year!!! That important news is no joke.

Baroness Elsa

This week, my long held beliefs about Marcel Duchamp were shattered. For years I have been fascinated by his alter-ego female persona Rrose Sélavy. That was the first to go… and then that pesky R. Mutt toilet — discussion of which has graced several of our History of posts (here and here and here). That urinal was not a Duchampian instigation but was first identified as “found” by the Baroness Elsa Freytag-Loringhoven. And Baroness Elsa had been merging gender identities for years before Duchamp put on that feathered chapeau.

Freytag-Loringhoven admired Duchamp both artistically and perhaps romantically. One of her early performances consisted of her rubbing a newspaper article about the artist’s famous painting Nude Descending a Staircase (1912) over her naked body and then reciting a poem that ended, “Marcel, Marcel, I love you like Hell, Marcel.” While Duchamp did not return her romantic advances, he did return the admiration for her as an artist, saying, “She’s not a futurist. She is the future.” Some historians suggest that the Baroness’s persona and physical appearance inspired Duchamp to adopt his female alter-ego Rrose Selavy. Openly bisexual in the 1920s, Freytag-Loringhoven’s unapologetic sexuality and promiscuity caused much scandal, even among her avant-garde confrères, and sometimes overshadowed the art she created. — from the biography Baroness Elsa by Irene Gammel.

It’s fraught story of love and intrigue that begs for a revision of art history. What happens when that toilet descends the staircase?

For more scoop read The Mama of Dada published in 2002.

Elsa cut a wide swath as she sashayed through Greenwich Village in her sensational  (and oft times gender-bending) outfits made from everyday objects — spoons for earrings, tomato tin cans for a brassiere and vegetables to garnish her hat. 

Playing dress up or playing for real isn’t just for fun. Trying on different garments, different costumes gives free reign to the imagination. There is no limit to who, where, what we can be. Elsa was living proof.

Snap Chat

Although I thought it was already pretty smart to predict that the camera capacity on our phones was truly the future. That was before Thursday, October 17, when I discovered TikTok and then Saturday October 19, when I discovered Snapchat and learned that the future is now.

https://futureof.art.blog/2019/09/13/chekhovs-gun/

https://futureof.art.blog/lesson-plan-lesson-twelve/

Photo manipulation apps are all the rage —no wonder people are addicted to their phones.

One can instantly transform oneself into an animal, vegetable, mineral and in a swipe of the screen can modify gender.

Who doesn’t want try on someone else?

Who doesn’t want to proclaim:

I’m an eggplant.

I’m a peach.

One good turn...

Once again Desnos nails it perfectly with his apt aphorism:

One good turn sometimes turns out well for somebody...

But, in the case yesterday at the Achenbach, every turn of the page turned out well for all of us. Thanks to Steve Woodall for curating such a remarkable experience with the fine focus on the Desnos/Miro extravaganza. 

A Google search took me to Surrealism and the Book by Renee Riese Hubert that describes the collaboration between Joan Miró & Robert Desnos which resulted in Les Pénalités de l'Enfer ou les Nouvelles Hébrides, Maeght Editeur, Paris, 1974

 Click on each page to enlarge.

All sides NOW

All sides or as Joni Mitchell sung it Both Sides, either way this photo taken by Victor Obsatz in 1953 (FAMSF) inspired my Marc version that is more Brahma-Vishnu than the face of double-exposure of Marcel Duchamp or maybe...how about God?

In the Salzberg Museum this painting from the Middle Ages depicts the Holy Trinity, the mystical unity of the three divine persons: God the Father, God's Son, and God Holy Spirit.

Why is this simple graffiti always so funny??

Terry T. asks, "Why is this simple graffiti always so funny?"

Dear Terry,

The mustache graffiti you sent made me LOL then the gales of laughter got me musing, amusing about other mustache moments.

Last night I was reading being digital by Nicholas Negroponte. In his chapter ART WITH A CAPITAL “E” pg 223-224 I was struck by his vision of the digital future and to his reference to mustaches!!!

“The digital superhighway will turn finished and unalterable art into a thing of the past. The number of mustaches given to Mona Lisa is just child’s play. We will see serious digital manipulation performed in said-to-be-complete expressions moving across the Internet, which is not necessarily bad.”

Those in the know, would know, that he is referring to  L.H.O.O.Q. and the mustache Duchamp graffitied (rectified) on to the Mona Lisa. As satire, as profound transformation, either way L.H.O.O.Q. makes me LOL.

And Negroponte makes me think, it’s about digital time for mustaches on everybody.

Two Sides

It might be described as “two sides of the same coin” an idiom that implies that an idea or a thing has two sides and although they may seem different, they are very closely related

or 

maybe it's a coin with a depiction of Janus, the Roman god of beginnings, transitions, duality, passages and endings, who has two faces — one looking to the future and one looking to the past.

Illuminated Marcs

Inspired by the intricate embellishments of illuminated manuscripts these explorations put Marc in place in the center and in the margins of the alchemical.

Either or
Neither nor
might be the title of this year's exploration.
Thinking about the possibilities of the unions of opposites, the fulfillment of androgyny.

Androgeny is not trying to manage the relationship between the opposites; it is simply flowing between them...

June Singer